Catheters find their use in many different medical applications, such as urinary catheters for bladder drainage. These urinary catheters are inserted in a variety of populations, including the elderly, stroke victims, spinal cord-injured patients, post-operative patients and those with obstructive uropathy.
In order to maintain the catheter in a clean and preferably sterile condition, each catheter is normally pre-packed in a receptacle by the manufacturer. Furthermore, to facilitate the use and to improve cleanliness of the catheter, the assemblies have in recent years developed to comprise a rupturable wetting fluid pouch or container as well, where wetting of the catheter may be performed without the use of externally supplied water, and without breaking the sealed condition of it until intended use of the catheter. Such assemblies are disclosed in for instance WO 97/26937, WO 01/43807 and WO 98/11932. These documents further describe receptacles accommodating catheters, which receptacles may form urine collection bags. For such assemblies, the receptacle is not ripped off and then disposed off, instead it is maintained connected to the catheter and used as a urine collection bag. Utilizing the receptacle as a container for receiving the drained urine from the bladder may contribute to less spillage, as the catheter maintains connected to the receptacle during, as well as after, the drainage. Naturally, in order to utilize the receptacle as a urine collection bag, the receptacle needs to be of sufficient size.
A larger catheter assembly is however inconvenient, not least for the individuals for whom catheterization is a daily-life procedure. To alleviate the inconvenience, there is a strive for less space consuming catheter assemblies which improve life quality for the user of catheters in that the assemblies can be handled and stored more discreetly, for instance in the pocket of a users clothing. A catheter and a receptacle accommodating the catheter, which receptacle forms a urine collection bag, are thus during storage preferably arranged and maintained in a compact manner, enabling for convenient handling of the assembly prior to use. For instance is the catheter assembly during its manufacturing procedure placed in an enclosing package, in which the assembly is intended to remain until an intended use of the catheter.
Known assemblies of the kind mentioned above, however, require complicated or expensive manufacturing procedures in order to maintain the assembly in a compact and sterile manner during storage, and consequently there is a need for an improved catheter assembly which can be produced more cost-efficiently and is yet compact in the storage stage and convenient to handle in a clean fashion.